1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to removing or lifting or drawing away, by air suction technique, small quantities of particulate, liquid, or molten matter and particularly to apparatus improvements in hand held, hand operated vacuum stroke cleaning devices. The present invention finds particularly useful application in the field of soldering, desoldering, and rewiring in electronic laboratories, maintenance shops, factories, or hobbyists' benches; and although, in the cause of clarify and brevity, much of the following discussion and description of examples of the invention are directed theretoward, it is expressly to be understood that the advantages of the invention are equally well manifest in other fields wherever and whenever substances are to be removed or cleaned from an object such, for further example, in medical or dental fields as in removal of foreign objects or unwanted substances from portions of the body including the eye, ear, nose, throat, or open wound or the like.
2. Background of the Invention
In the electrical arts as mentioned, it is often desired to desolder an electrical connection such as, for example, a wire wrapped terminal, a wire to circuit board terminal, the terminals of a surface mounted device such as an integrated circuit chip, or the like. The removal, from the connection, of the molten solder without dropping or spattering it onto other portions of the equipment is generally essential. Blowing or shaking the molten metal away is therefore not an acceptable practice; and, in combination with its high mass density, the high surface tension associated with the solder makes its removal particularly difficult. Furthermore, the problem is aggravated by the requirement that the solder be removed quickly and without application of cooling means before the mechanical connection such as a multiterminal microcircuit chip-to-circuit board or a wire-wrapped terminal may be taken apart.